


Nights and Mornings

by StAnni



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 02:27:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17778833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StAnni/pseuds/StAnni
Summary: They were children then, they are children still, lovers who are enemies and wars are fought by building walls and outwaiting the other’s silence.





	Nights and Mornings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FrisianWanderer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrisianWanderer/gifts).



He has a memory of Selina as a young woman, loose curls moving in the wind, and she sits on the edge of a building as if she is sitting on the edge of the world. She looks over her shoulder, her eyes are green against the darkness of the night that folds around her like a slow closing hand. What brought her, or them, to that point – he doesn’t remember, but it must have been of great significance for time to have seeped out the details of that night, down to one singular vision – a girl, deeply loved, sitting on the edge of the world.

On his nineteenth birthday Alfred hands him a note, just a piece of paper, and he recognizes her handwriting right away. She is leaving Gotham for reasons she scribble out, short and curt – but reasons he forgets as soon as the note crumples in his fist, blinding her out. 

“I am not good for you.” It is the first thing she says when he wakes up next to her this morning. She probably hasn’t slept at all, she probably have been mulling on those words for the entire night. He is instantly frustrated and rolls away, reaching for his watch and pretends to check the time as he feels her cool eyes on his back. She always does this – always when they wake up after – it is just another variation of what she has said before. He sits up and rubs his face. She is waiting for his response and he doesn’t feel like going through the same thing for the umpteenth time: “I wish you would say what you really feel the night before instead of the morning after.” or “How can you still say that?” or “Then why do you come back, every time.”  
They have had all of those arguments. He doesn’t have the emotional capacity to go through that ringer this morning. He gets up and walks to the ensuite without a response – which is a response in itself, he knows. He also knows that when he comes back to bed she’ll be gone.

He has another memory of Selina –or of them, and they were both young – the last turbulent vestiges of their teens - and living as if the streets were burning in their wake. She puts her arms around his shoulders and leans her head back – the moonlight pooling a shadow behind her. It is the night of the first time they are together and they are both only slightly drunk. Her lips part and for the first time he doesn’t stop himself, or reassess or immediately numb his heart to the prospect of hope. He leans in, tips her head forward with his fingers at her neck and parts his lips to hers. The kiss is quiet, deep and different to the kisses they have shared before – in the sense that it is apparent, for the first time, that this kiss is leading somewhere more intimate. 

The bed is empty, as he expected, when he walks into the room again. He gets dressed with a rage simmering in his heart. The espresso machine churns as he stares at the cup in silence. He has an almost over-powering urge to throw the cup, along with the machine, over his balcony. He is thirty three and still chasing after a girl who will never be caught. When he does sip the coffee it burns his palette and he closes his eyes against the feeling – taking it in. Alfred is right, he is a silent mess.

There is a memory of Selina, a few years ago, he was twenty seven and they hadn’t seen each other in coming up to eleven months. Her face was drawn and she turned away as soon as he recognised her. He had to explain to Rachel, get her a cab from the restaurant, as he ran after where he saw Selina. He finally found her on top of the old Siren’s club – standing on the roof with her jacket drawn tight around her shoulders. She didn’t have a right to expect anything from him, not an explanation, not an apology – but he gave them to her, immediately.  
She stayed at his new apartment for four days and they almost never left the bedroom – relearning each other both emotionally and physically. The memory is a blur of moments – her face, the disappointment and hurt upon seeing him exit the restaurant, her breath on his neck and her lips opening against his skin, her whispers at night – her sighs and moans, her eyes so piercingly alert as he told her about a new division at Wayne Tech, the weightlessness of her wrist on his chest as they slept – and then inevitably her words, like shrapnel, obliterating.

Outside the day is bright and it is as if the rest of the world doesn’t even care that he steps into it with a heart as heavy as lead, berating himself for falling for the same tricks again. Because that is what they are – tricks to keep him, foolery, enticing distractions from the truth – that no matter how many times she returns, Selina will never stay.

When they are twenty five he is unraveling and starts an argument in the lift going up to his penthouse. A neighbor, an unfortunate and unwilling spectator to his outburst, clears his throat uncomfortably as Selina stares at Bruce, shocked. “What?” She asks him, anger rising. “You heard me. Are you just here to fuck?”  
Back then he was braver.  
He expects the slap and to be fair, he does feel bad for the neighbor, who races out of the lift the moment the door pings. He also expects Selina to leave, follow the neighbor out, but she doesn’t. “Be very careful.” She says as she stares at him– his cheek still stinging with the force behind her palm. “Do you love me, Selina?” He asks because her eyes are steely and they have lost so much time – he needs to know. There is a flicker, something soft and light across her face – a crack in the veneer and she sighs, looks away “This was a bad call…” But he doesn’t let her leave at the next floor, and she doesn’t leave at the next floor. And when they reach the penthouse he pulls her to him and this kiss is fiercely unrelenting. The memory of that night, in its intense desperation is clearer – etched behind his eyes on his darker days.  
She unbuckles his belt before they are even all the way through the foyer and he lifts her against the wall, pushing against her – wanting more than anything to get under her skin, to know, by however means necessary, whether his love for her is reciprocated. It is furious and clumsy and she arches her back when he draws down her pants – her fingers splayed against the wall. And for a moment he is lost there – in the spread of her pale fingers against the grey paint. But it is just for a second before she lifts that hand and urges him up by the cheek – still sensitive from her earlier assault – and he rises over her, lifting her legs around him now and pushing inside. 

Outside the day is bright, too bright and when he reaches Wayne Enterprises his mood has gone from bad to abysmal. His secretary quietly closes his door when he throws his phone across his office. He has tried to call Selina five times since this morning and she is not picking up her phone – a phone he got her, when she finally relented and agreed to be slightly more contactable. They were children then, they are children still, lovers who are enemies and wars are fought by building walls and outwaiting the other’s silence.

Another flash of memory - she turns on her side, away from him, in bed and speaks quietly – telling him about how her mother died, the ashes that she spread across the roofs of some city by the coast. They are both twenty eight and her shoulders are cool against his skin as he holds her from behind – wrapping his arms around her. Her hair smells like the vanilla shampoo in his shower and he wishes he could remember every word she ever said to him.  
He remembers her fingers on his skin in the middle of the night as she moved down against him, rendering him speechless and his mind whiting out in pleasure – the feathery touch of her curls on his thighs.  
And then there is the morning – her inevitable regret, the distance that she puts between them callously defensive. “We should stop this.” That turned into one of their more unpleasant arguments and left him cut, decimated as she closed the door.

Finally his phone rings and through the new cracked screen he can see “Selina” blinking in and out. He picks up and breathes, steadying himself – if he is a silent mess it is because time has taught him to internalize with Selina. “Five hours. Let me guess, you’re in Mexico.”  
Her chuckle is like cool water on a burn and it catches him off-guard. “You sound pissed. Glad I didn’t stick around for that.” She is teasing and he can feel his heart rate lower, can feel himself exhale a weight off his shoulders. If he is as silent mess it is because of Selina, as simple as that.  
“I cracked my phone. I threw it.” He admits and she chuckles again – genuinely amused. “Serves you right.”  
If he is a mess it is because without Selina he is a mess, as simple as that.  
“We need to talk.” She says, and he sits down – steeling himself. “So you’re not in Mexico?” He asks, diverting himself more than her and she takes a moment before she answers, her voice serious “Come to the roof at nine. Your place is too nice, too distracting.” He knows that she means it as a light hearted taunt but the fact that she wants to meet somewhere neutral, somewhere where she can easily bound off into darkness, has his heart ill at ease again. “Alright” He agrees, because really, with Selina, he’d meet her in hell if he had to.

There are memories, in his darker days that he would rather erase from his mind than grapple with in the days when he has hope. One of these memories is of the morning after Selina’s twenty sixth birthday – after she had pulled on her jacket and was leaning against the side table, zipping up her boots. “Your phone rang while you were in the shower this morning.” She said, not looking at him. “Rachel.” She finishes, and then finally looks at him – eyes quiet and cold. They were both twenty six and he had loved Selina, gravely and completely, for more than a decade. Her apparent betrayal at a name, albeit the name of a person who had been the only person with the potential to draw him out of his cycle with Selina, was unwarranted and hurtful. That had been the only morning that he had asked Selina to leave, and had lead to the only expanse of silence between them that she didn’t break herself by returning of her own volition- but when he had to find her, on the roof those many nights ago.

The night is dark and she sits on the edge of the building. Her hair is longer now, lighter from the sun. Her eyes are different to – all traces of the naïve replaced with guarded strength. She smiles at him, just a slight smile, like she did when they were younger. “I guess it’s about that time.” She says and he walks up behind her, his hands in his coat pockets, his shoulders stiff with agitation. “Please don’t go, Selina.” He says and she looks back at the night. He has pleaded with her on many occasions, they have yelled and fought and cursed each other. There is not a route that they have not taken with each other. “When I go, tonight, I don’t think I’m going to come back, Bruce.” She says, and her voice is calm, too even and it feels like a punch to his gut. “I’m not going to come back, I mean. I won’t come back.” And this time she does look at him – and at the hurt apparent on his face she looks away, affected.  
He waits because he has no words, and she breathes, her shoulders hunching slightly, her fingers splayed on the black brick like they were splayed against his wall.  
“It’s not because I don’t love you, it’s because I do.”

He is thirty five and Alfred has formally retired. The retirement party that Bruce has arranged for Alfred is lavish and gaudy, visited by older friends and new acquaintances. After a stuttered start of a relationship with Rachel for two years, she has finally married someone else and even though he knows that it probably would never have worked between them, there is a dull ache when she smiles at him, warmly as she passes.

Outside the night air is dry and the trace of music coming from the restaurant leaves it feeling empty, lonely. He walks to his car and as he turns to give Alfred a wave goodbye, he catches sight of her – just a fraction of a second, on a nearby balcony.

When he reaches the penthouse his heart is already bounding in his chest and when he sees her, quiet as a ghost, he stops, his heart stops and she smiles, lifting her shoulders in a small shrug. “I’m not leaving this time.” She says.


End file.
